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The Man Who Sold The War In Iraq (must read)

Rolling Stone has an excellent (and astonishing) article profiling John Rendon, master propagandist, the man who “sold the war”… and continues to sell it. I’m not going to excerpt the juicy bits… the whole thing is one big juicy bit. This is a must read article. Perhaps one of the top ten most significant news reports you’ll read all year, in terms of understanding the big picture (and the details underlying it).

The article provides a huge amount of context for how we got into the war (long term covert propaganda campaign), and why we are still engaged, and what we are up against: $300/hour public relations consultants with access to intelligence at the highest levels (probably better than most members of Congress) participating in policy shaping decisions at the highest levels… and a military/intelligence complex that has been thoroughly privatized and outsourced and has absolutely no compunctions about manipulating public opinion by any means necessary. An utterly corrupt government that does not trust the goodwill and common sense of the American people one whit… note that this has gone on, under both Clinton and Bush.This is the death of democracy. Without a media that we can trust, at any level, without an informed and aware populace able to make reasonably rational collective decisions, democracy simply cannot function. Joseph Goebbels would be green with envy.
Will the Democrats cut off the gravy train? Hopefully… but, what they’ll do, at best, is cut off this particular gravy train, not declare the whole concept anethema. The CIA and Pentagon, under either Republican or Democrat, will continue to pour billions into info-warfare, manipulation of domestic and foriegn media, and shaping public opinion in furtherance of their internal policy agendas. There’s only one political party that would stop this, and every reader of this blog knows that.

4 thoughts on “The Man Who Sold The War In Iraq (must read)”

Thomas, if we don’t get an anti war candidate I will be campaigning for whoever the greens send up.
You want to read Maureen Farrel’s latest on the military industrial complex:http://www.buzzflash.com/farrell/05/11/far05001.html
I already slammed Bayh, Biden, Clinton and Kerry for their pro war position. I cannot support anybody who supports that. ever.

Yup. Knowledge is power, and we’re living in a fairyland fantasy. This must be what the Bush administration meant when it claimed that they “create their own reality.” And it’s not just the lack of real knowledge, most of which appears to be classified, no matter how simple and basic, like what are living conditions in Iraq right now. We’ve also been brainwashed into accepting God knows how many false assumptions.
Like what’s going on about training an Iraqi army and police force. The assumption is that we can’t pull out our troops until they’re well trained enough to “take over.” So why all the conflicting reports about how this is going? There’s an amazing paradox between fact and fiction here.
We were sold the Iraq war at least partly on the basis that Saddam had this ultra-effective, cruel army and police attacking its own citizens and then invading Kuwait. Now, in contrast, Iraqis don’t seem to be able to pick up a gun. I’m suffering more than a little cognitive dissonance about this, but everybody else, including the Democrats, seems to be swallowing it whole. Maybe Iraqis resist being ordered to blast their fellow citizens back into the stone age? Maybe they don’t want to have an army created in our image, serving our purposes? I bet if we get out of there they’ll manage to put together their own army in nothing flat. They’re hardly stupid.

As time goes on, more and more of the real story behind the Bush Administration propaganda machine run out of Dick Cheney’s office through the Office of Special Plans. Use of propaganda is forbidden by the Smith-Mundt Act to be used against the America…

We were warned by Eisenhower about the military industrial complex (MIC) in 1961. America promptly forgot his warning. Political leaders benefited working both government policy positions and lucrative corporate contractors. Ultimately, government poli…